Evening at Hoxne

This landscape probably dates to circa 1909 when Munnings painted several examples of this scene in different seasons and at different times of the day. Munnings found endless inspiration in the rippling pools and eddies as they continuously transformed the surface of a meandering river. The play of light dances upon the agitated swirls as the current slides around a bend in the River Waveney. Here the early evening light descends upon the landscape gradually hiding nature's details and Munnings obviously worked quickly to apply broad strokes of color to capture the softening hues of dusk before the scene dissolves into darkness. Around the turn of the century Munnings would often travel a nomadic life with a string of ponies. He would start in May near Ringland, north west of Norwich and by mid-July he would head south into Suffolk. The Waveney valley around Scole was a favorite painting spot where he would reside until October at either the White Hart Inn at Scole or at near by Spring Farm a few miles west.

Munnings' interest in water was retained throughout his life and he refers back to the mill and the waterways of Norfolk in the final volume of his autobiography, 'My home was on a river...Now, when I'm often far from it, my one desire is to find the time, which I never can, to write about it and browse back on the past, to picture its lovely mills, each in turn and lastly one of the largest on the river - our mill where we lived...the first mill in my remembrances is Hoxne. There was a paradise in miniature for anyone....I could devote a chapter to Hoxne alone.' (A.J. Munnings, The Finish, Bungay, 1952, p. 299).

This work will be included in Lorian Peralta-Ramos' forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Sir Alfred Munnings.